I guess to be fair to Jason's death, it was originally meant more as a way of permanently putting him on a bus than to play up the drama. (I can't shake the feeling that if some of the people who voted for Jason to be killed had known how much his death was going to have an influence on the whole mythos, they might have reconsidered.) I tend to see a death as a fridging if it's played to make others react/angst about it/go into now-it's-personal mode.
That's the awesome thing about Robin; all the roles you can make him/her play. In one story he can be the hostage, and in the next one he can save the day, and he can give you a view on issues that Batman really can't (juvenile delinquents can't look the same to Batman and to Robin), and he makes Batman simultaneously more human and more of a symbol, and he's an incredibly apt metaphor for adolescence, and he gets to make the bad puns, and he can make you really realize that Gotham and Batman = fucked-up, dangerous, and worth saving. I love my Scary Bat God and his Deceptively Brightly Coloured Robin God. ...Damn, I wanted to avoid mindless gushing, sorry 'bout that.